arland my brow
and hold on to a crook and wear a loose-effect and play on a pipe like
the shepherds do in pictures.'

"So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive the flock of
muttons from the corral to about two miles out and let 'em graze on a
little hillside on the prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions about
not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving 'em
down to a water-hole to drink at noon.

"'I'll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the
buckboard before night,' says he.

"'Fine,' says I. 'And don't forget the rations. Nor the camping outfit.
And be sure to bring the tent. Your name's Zollicoffer, ain't it?"

"'My name,' says he, 'is Henry Ogden.'

"'All right, Mr. Ogden,' says I. 'Mine is Mr. Percival Saint Clair.'

"I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the wool
entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next to me.
I was lonesomer than Crusoe's goat. I've seen a lot of persons more
entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I'd drive 'em to the
corral and pen 'em every evening, and then cook my corn-bread and mutton
and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a table-cloth, and listen
to the coyotes and whip-poor-wills singing around the camp.

"The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial
muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door.

"'Mr. Ogden,' says I, 'you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep are
all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton
suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank
along with five-o'clock teazers. If you've got a deck of cards, or a
parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get 'em out, and let's get on a
mental basis. I've got to do something in an intellectual line, if it's
only to knock somebody's brains out.'

"This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger-rings
and a big gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was calm, and
his nose-spectacles was kept very shiny. I saw once, in Muscogee, an
outlaw hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer for him. But I
knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken to be his brother.
I didn't care much for him either way; what I wanted was some fellowship
and communion with holy saints or lost sinners--anything sheepless would
do.

"'Well, Saint Clair,' says he, laying down the book he was reading, 'I